


The Man Beneath the Uniform

by allthetrek



Series: A Stranding, A Crash Landing [2]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M, Gen, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 09:52:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18914557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthetrek/pseuds/allthetrek
Summary: Captain Pike and the reader get stranded on a Class L planet. With no guarantee of rescue, they must adapt to life together in their new environment. Eventually, formalities and professional boundaries fall away, leaving room for  a more personal connection to flourish.





	The Man Beneath the Uniform

Your knuckles are white as your grip your seat, silently bargaining with the universe to see you safely through the layers of atmosphere as your ship descends to the Class L planet below. The vessel shudders as it travels through dense layers of gas and vapor, threatening to breach the battered and beaten craft before it can come to rest on the surface.

By some miracle, it holds together, and you break through the cloud layer, exhaling your bated breath as you continue guiding the ship down. You tap the console, attempting to set the landing parameters, but the function is offline. You bite your lip, glancing over at the still unconscious Captain Pike. What would he do in this situation? Hell, he’s the one who used to be a test pilot, not you! If only… No. You can do this. You’re Starfleet, dammit!

You peer into the viewscreen ahead of you, taking in the landscape of the planet that is to be your salvation. At least, you hope that’s what it will be. It’s a newly habitable planetoid, the atmosphere having formed comparatively recently, and life is just beginning to evolve here. Vast rocky plains stretch out below the ship, and as you get closer to the surface, tall spires of rock reach toward you, threatening to slice the hull clean through should you get too close.

You’re almost there… Just a few hundred meters to go… You brace yourself, hands on the console, as the ship makes contact, skidding violently along the virgin rock, sliding some distance before coming at last to a full stop. You feel the harness of your seat relax as your body comes to rest, along with the Captain, safely locked in place next to you.

“Unghhh…” you hear him utter from beside you, groggily coming out of his injury-induced loss of consciousness. You power down nonessential systems and begin running diagnostics and scans of the exterior environment. Then, it’s time to tend to the captain as he comes back to the land of the living.

“Captain, uh, easy there,” you state softly, unlatching your safety harness and reaching over to assist him. It’s only as you go to unbuckle his harness that you notice a piece of shrapnel protruding from his ribcage. Sanguine blood stains his command-gold uniform jacket. When did that happen?

“Lieutenant…” Captain Pike breathes to you, gathering his bearings, but the sharp pain in his side catches him. “Unghh!” he growls, his hand coming to brush against the piece of metal and he looks down at the wound, then back at you, his eyes dark and questioning. What the hell happened back there!?

“Status report, [Y/L/N],” he orders, as you thread your arm carefully around him, helping him to stand and walking him toward the small sleeping alcove of the ship to lie down so you can assess him. The ships sleeps four, with two bunk cots on either side of a narrow walkway toward the rear of the vessel.

You briefly fill the Captain in on the events that transpired while he was out, as you help him to lie on the cot. You carefully take his jacket off, with his help, his face contorting in pain as he moves. You grab the med kit and proceed to cut his blood-soaked undershirt away, revealing his lean upper body, and you feel your cheeks growing warm as your eyes scan his toned abs and pecs. You’d be lying if you said you’d never imagined what was under his uniform…

No. This is serious. You both realize you’ll need to pull the piece of shrapnel out of him before you can treat the wound. Captain Pike takes a breath, his hands gripping the thin mattress beneath him, as you grip the jagged metal. No counting, you just go for it, yanking out the intruding debris, the Captain yelling bloody murder as it detaches from his flesh.

Blood trickles out of the wound, and you rush to fill it with biogel. The anticoagulant and analgesic properties begin to set in quickly, and relief floods through Pike. You gingerly press a bandage over the area, your eyes meeting the Captains, and you nod to him, indicating his treatment is complete, for the moment.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” he states, genuine appreciation notable in his weary tone. You gaze down at him, trying not to stare at his broad shoulders, his chiselled jaw, so prominent from this angle…

The computer interrupts your moment. “Ship diagnostics complete. Damage report available.”


End file.
